GRADE 10 pupils from Eden School – Tirell Pillay, Emily Garland and Amahle Naywose – entered the South Africa Institute of International Affairs Environmental Competition recently.
This took the form of an academic paper which was submitted to the institute for prior judging. The topic they researched was urban food gardens as a solution to sustainability. The pupils pursued academic research on the topic of sustainability and the sustainable development goals being launched at the COP 21 summit in Paris in December, and on urbanisation, including the issues of the long distances that food must be transported into cities, food insecurity among the urban poor and environmental issues, such as lack of water seepage and soil degeneration.
The solution the pupils suggested was more community food gardens. They visited the Kenneth Gardens feeding scheme and analysed the reasons for the failure of their food garden, comparing this with the success of a food garden project in the city of Seattle, Oregon USA.
From the prior judging, five schools were selected to present their papers at the Durban Botanic Gardens lecture complex on Monday, 14 September. The team won the KZN provincial event and was invited to Johannesburg to participate in the Future Young Leaders Conference to be held at the University of the Witwatersrand in early December.
